Pages

Thursday, 28 March 2013

Green plastic grass

The piste machines got replaced by
great yellow tractors carrying big chunks of frozen snow and laying
them in a heap, revealing a green plastic football field. The year's
Nordic skiing competitions that kept us company every weekend came to
an end last Sunday, and with them the skiing season drew its last
breath, inhaling skiers and exhaling joggers. A passionate spring
sun, eager to wake nature up with a warm kiss and turn barren ground
into fertile flowers and naked branches into haute couture, melts the
snow. But, when night comes and the cold returns, the water turns
into ice, and winter makes a last effort to resist the onslaught of
bird song and sunburned cheeks.

And me. I am lost, standing on my one
good leg, balancing precariously on the ledge between white and
green. My heart is indifferent to the change of season this year. It loves
spring, but it loves the white winter of the North, too. But my body
wishes that the winter would stick around a couple of weeks longer.
My feet want to find their way back to the soft trails of last
autumn, but my knee cannot follow. So it tries to ski instead. Skiing
is not as demanding for it. Skiing works. Please, let it be winter
until the injury heals.

I tried to run with AIK last Saturday,
a 23 km run. I couldn't decide until the last minute if I was going
to attempt a run or not. What finally made up my mind for me was the
wonderful weather. I had to get out, I had to try. It went well for
the first 6 kilometres. Then, it went worse. I describe it as a knee
problem, but both the backside of my thigh and my calf are involved.
They weren't happy with all the uphill running. Downhill, it felt
better, and I thought I would make it the rest of the way home
without any more pain, but then my runner's knee decided to join us.
Despite having the opportunity to stop running and get a lift home a
couple of times, I marched on, pig-headedly. In the end, I told the
others to go on without me and stopped to stretch. It helped; I could
continue running after a while and made it home.

The aftermath was not as great as I had
feared. Whatever leg muscle is injured felt inflamed the rest of the
day, and I had some difficulty bending it, but the next day it was as
pain-free as it had been the day before the run. I went skiing,
breaking my distance record and making some progress technique-wise,
which gave me hope that I would be able to maintain my level of
fitness until my leg got better.

Now, snow is turning into ice. Ice is
not as soft as snow. I went skiing yesterday, wisely avoiding the
hilly terrain in the forest and sticking to the flat surfaces around
the camping area. I had thought I'd practice switching from one track to the other,
a balance exercise that, if done right, could do wonders for my
confidence and skill level. Then, failing spectacularly at doing the exercise right and while I was trying to place my skis into
the tracks, I fell. My knee hit the hard ice. I took a minute to rest
right there on the ground, wincing and swearing.

It is probably nothing serious, just a
bruised knee. But it is a reminder that spring is coming, and I am
not ready for it.